KNDE (Candy 95) Bryan/College Station, Texas, OM Rob Mack understands the value of both local and live, even when those aren’t the same thing. Earlier this month, KNDE, one of CHR’s most-respected small-market stations, became a new affiliate of the syndicated Liveline with Mason Kelter. Here’s what Mack had to say about that decision, adapted from a May 15 Facebook posting.
I added a syndicated show to Candy 95 this month.
For a programmer, adding a syndicated show is probably not something you choose to do, or look forward to doing. I’ve resisted it every step of the way in my career. That’s not a knock on talented hosts and quality shows that have worked hard to achieve a position of being heard in multiple cities. But it’s a statement of fact that [choosing to add a syndicated show typically] comes from a place of necessity, economic reality, all that. This was no different.
We used to have someone local voice-tracking nights on KNDE. Advertisers long ago decided that the “prime” dayparts were 6am to 7pm. That means not as many advertisers in evenings…and for that matter, many stations struggle for audience in the evening. The available audience is much smaller. Working adults are at home, spending time with their families, doing other things. It becomes a lot harder to justify paying someone to work in hours with fewer ears. That’s business and I get it.
CHR, or Top 40 radio, has long been the exception. Top 40 is the format that has historically had the youngest listeners. Students, young adults working part-time evening jobs, second or third shifts. It wasn’t that long ago that Top 40 stations would easily command a quarter of listening in a city in the evening. The night show was the place for the kids. It’s where new music was played first. The energy shifted on the station a bit. You pushed the envelope a little more than you would have at 11am on a Tuesday.
I grew up on some great nighttime radio, and if you’re in the business, you did too. I did live nights for a bit. Overnights, before that. Our phones would ring constantly until 2:30 in the morning. Many successful people in our business got their big break doing nights.
I think we can all agree that it sucks to not have those exciting, high personality, high energy night shows that were local to each city around the country on Top 40’s every evening. We miss the shows that got us hooked on the excitement of radio and helped to inject the bug into us that made us want to do this for a living.
I think we can also all agree that it ain’t 2007 anymore and never will be again.
As such, evenings on the majority of radio stations are now syndicated and not live. It’s content recorded earlier in the day, or sometimes days in advance. Many are “morning show” type shows in the evening where several folks share a mic and banter. They are content islands that don’t feel like they are connected to, or are a part of, the rest of the radio station. For that matter, there’s a shocking number of radio stations nationwide that are merely content islands all days–regurgitated national, generic slop that has no relevance or interest to the community in which it’s being fed to a transmitter.
Night shows today are nothing like the night shows of the past, which featured heavy interaction, contests, countdowns, listeners on the air, and loads of energy. The difference with Liveline is right in the title–“live.” I was in Indiana when the show launched in 2020. I thought it was a good idea then–a live request show, but broadcasting nationwide. None of the other syndicated offerings could say that.
I listened to the show a fair amount before pulling the trigger. Because of Kelter’s weekly Mason’s Observations column and his weekly requests, I knew we were of a similar musical mindset and that, musically, the show would fit in fairly well with what we were already doing during the day. Mason is also young, 24 years old…and while I think way too many people in radio have given up on reaching anyone under 25 or 30.
I told Mason that I’m sure every PD believes that their station is going to be the one that generates a ton of calls for them, and while I haven’t listened to the entirety of every show, I’m fairly certain he’s gotten callers from here every night the show has been on the air–sometimes several in a night, or even in a row last night.
By definition, it’s not a local show. But it is a live show. And if our listeners are listening, calling, interacting, getting on the air, then it kind of becomes a local show.
It’s also live radio at night, at a time when every other station in our town (like in most towns) is not live. It sounds good on the air, it could help encourage people to call us in other dayparts and could provide an overall lift to our ratings as a whole. It’s giving a nice jolt of energy and changing the vibe of what we put out at night. And isn’t that what Top 40 stations are supposed to do?
radioguy2020
I think an article with a contrasting point-of-view would be nice. There are plenty of stations in all market sizes that still thrive on local night shows. Pick a few of them in various markets and formats and highlight how they help each station stand out. There is still plenty of audience to make nighttime radio work in 2026. You have second shift workers, delivery drivers, busy parents taking their kids from one place to the next, etc. This is not only the time when younger people tend to listen more but also when kids are listening in the car with their parents (especially 7-10pm local time). I don’t know if I would have chosen radio as a career path if it weren’t for the strong local night jocks in my market. I remember being hauled along to my sister’s swim lessons that were roughly 45 minutes away with all the traffic, and listening to the local CHR night jock was the only thing that made those trips enjoyable. Many years later, I found myself doing delivery work (Uber Eats and DoorDash) for extra cash during the pandemic and was thankful local nighttime radio in my market was still very much alive. A voice tracked local night show beats a live syndicated show any day. Every city has their own local culture, from the sports teams to events to goofy catchphrases, and that culture doesn’t go to sleep at 7pm. I almost think local nights matter even more than middays – during the workday, you get a lot of passive office listening. At night, the audience is smaller, but the people tuned in are much more engaged and need a strong local personality to relate to. Even on formats where pop culture is front and center, I feel like most listeners would rather hear a break about the baseball game or a viral local story than about why a 10 year-old Zara Larsson song is trending on TikTok, or never-ending Taylor/Travis wedding gossip. (Of course there’s always room for both.) Just my two cents.